Our Facebook feed this week has been overflowing with jokes and outrage about the Michigan State Congress where Rep. Lisa Brown was banned from speaking on the floor after saying “vagina” in a debate over an abortion bill. Brown’s sound response: “It’s an anatomically correct term for woman’s anatomy. It actually exists in Michigan statutes in three different places. This bill was about abortion. That doesn’t happen without a vagina.” Unsurprisingly, male lawmakers’ discomfort about speaking openly about the very bodies they are attempting to regulate is not new. In 1932, Margaret Sanger went to Washington to lobby against a provision in the Comstock Law that categorized birth control information as obscene and punished those who distributed it, including health care professionals (seriously). Below are two passages from her papers that illustrate some of the all-to-familiar attitudes she encountered there.

Sanger lobbying Congress, 1932

American Woman’s Association Award Speech, April 20, 1932:“We found that the great difficulty was misunderstanding. We further found that the great majority of these men were both badly informed and misinformed. Of course, we found that the younger men, some of the newer ones, knew something of the pros and cons of birth control. One could easily know that by the size of their own families. But when it came to asking for a law to allow others to have the same privileges that they had, the subject became a serious one that had to have their due consideration.”

Letter to Mary Hope Macaulay, May 21, 1932:“But Mary dear their arguments grow weaker, they put up a very poor case this time never have we so thoroughly aroused the people as this year. Thousands wrote to Congressmen and oh Mary such letters!! Many of them classics. Just to arouse people to ask, to demand this right makes me feel the victory is near. And oh Mary you would love to see the look on the men’s faces… when I replied to pertinent questions & talked about “douches” — Their faces were scarlet! Poor darlings they wanted to escape but they had to sit & listen to what women endure. I read letter from Mothers & their old tired eyes were moist & I knew they understood & were moved.”

Margaret Sanger has always been a controversial figure. Her radical feminism, associations with eugenicists, and passionate support of birth control riled many both in her lifetime and today. Currently women’s rights are under attack from segments of the American right who are attempting to discredit Margaret Sanger in order to attack the reproductive freedoms she helped establish. The most common approach is to recycle well-worn myths about Sanger, like Michael Steele’s recent claims that Sanger advocated black genocide, or supported the Nazis. (You can find the Sanger Papers’ analysis to these faulty claims here and here). Many haters also insist incorrectly that Sanger was an advocate of abortion. Here are some particularly juicy tweets we encountered while trying to encourage a more historically sound interpretation of Sanger’s legacy:

Much of this vitriol stems from hatred and misunderstanding of Planned Parenthood’s abortion services. As the founder of Planned Parenthood, Sanger is an easy target for these partisans because she is no longer able to speak for herself. Yet Planned Parenthood did not offer abortions until Roe v. Wade in 1973, seven years after Sanger’s death. Although Sanger founded the organization, she had little to do with the practices that they so vehemently contest. They are manipulating the legacy of Sanger to fight contemporary battles and disregarding context and historical accuracy in the process. They need to reimagine Sanger as a racist abortion advocate in order to have her fit into today’s ideological schisms, schisms that hardly existed in her era.

But hatred towards Sanger is nothing new. In her lifetime, she received quite a bit of hate mail, some of which has been preserved in the archive. In the mid-twentieth century, the most outspoken critics of Sanger were Catholics who objected to her public criticism of the Pope and support of family planning. Others were worried about the future of population growth -particularly of white Americans and Europeans- and worried that family planning would weaken these groups. Here is a favorite that we found in the Margaret Sanger Papers:

“Dear Madam: You have been a shameless “murderess on parade” for a long while. However, you never looked more hellishly ludicrous than at present when the government is about to launch a campaign to encourage as many births as possible as has been done for sometime in Europe. Perhaps this will see and end to your shameless debasing of Parenthood. You, if you ever had any real Christian upbringing, must have developed a cast iron conscience to be able to carry on your soul the innumerable times you are guilty of having the Commandment–Thou shalt not kill–broken by poor innocent people who listened to your advice. The average schoolboy or girl knows more about contraceptives than you do and that is well-known; which makes your birth-controllers hopelessly out-dated. If you were a sincere person you would devote your time to something clean worthwhile.” (Aug. 28, 1941, Brooklyn, N.Y. [LCM 50:135].)

If you want to read more on the hate mail that Sanger received in her lifetime, visit our article “Dear Madam, I Abhor You” at the Sanger Papers Newsletter!

You know, we are a pretty laid back group here at the Sanger Papers. Its unusual for vicious debates to break out, but that was before we launched the @SangerPapers Twitter account a few months ago. The Twitter sphere is full of people who are rabidly opposed to Planned Parenthood, and in order to attack the organization, they tend to latch onto historic myths and misrepresentations of its founder, Margaret Sanger. Naturally, in the name of historical accuracy (and feminism), we venture from time to time out into the battlefield of representation, and encounter people who seem profoundly unattached to anything like truth or reason. Sanger undoubtedly did and said enough questionable things in her lifetime, what is the point of making stuff up? Here are some particularly juicy highlights from yesterday’s Twitter debates about Sanger with a right-wing ideologues.

Is meaningful (Twitter) debate possible? Or is it just a forum for two opposed sides to shout about their beliefs? It was clear by the end that Ms. ObamaCzar was not talking about Margaret Sanger at all, but about abortion politics. It’s slightly ironic that Sanger didn’t condone abortion and it wasn’t practiced at Planned Parenthood until after Roe v Wade made it legal in 1973, seven years after her death.

Sanger’s Flyer for the first Birth Control Clinic in Brownsville, Brooklyn. “Do not kill, do not take a life, but Prevent”

Margaret Sanger was a pioneer of women’s reproductive rights, dedicating her life to opening family planning clinics around the world and making knowledge about birth control easily available. When Sanger began her life as an activist, the political struggle over women’s rights was very different than it is today. The Comstock Laws that Sanger was arrested for violating illegalized merely sending information regarding birth control in the mail! With that in mind, it comes as little surprise that Sanger’s views do not fit easily into today’s debate about women’s reproductive rights. Sanger was ambivalent, to say the least, about most important issue in recent years : access to abortions.

In Sanger’s opinion, abortion was an evil practice that would become obsolete once birth control was practiced and understood by women and families throughout the world. In 1932, Sanger wrote: “Although abortion may be resorted to in order to save the life of the mother, the practice of it merely for limitation of offspring is dangerous and vicious.” Although she strongly condemned the practice, she felt even more strongly that “it is a woman’s duty and right to have for herself the right to say when she shall and shall not have children.” Women’s right to control their reproduction took precedent over any moral or religious position. Unlike many today, Sanger trusted women to make the best decision for themselves:

“The only weapon that women have and the most uncivilized weapon that they have to use if they will not submit to having children every year or every year and a half, the weapon they use is abortion. . . . What does this mean? It means it is a very bad sign if women have to indulge in it, and it means they are absolutely determined that they cannot continue bringing children into the world that they cannot clothe, feed, and shelter. It is woman’s instinct, and she knows herself when she should and should not give birth to children, and it is just as natural to trust that instinct and to let her be the one to say and much more natural than it is to leave it to some unknown God for her to judge her by.”(MS, “Debate On Birth Control: First Speech,” Dec. 12, 1920 [MSM S76:0923 ].)

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